[ad_1]
With so many people carrying guns, it is no wonder we all are living in fear, including law enforcement officers. Our response? Arm ourselves and be sure to shoot first. The result? More guns and therefore more fear. A vicious circle. As my father used to say reflecting on similarly grave situations, “It’s a perfect disaster.”
Last week, a Black teen in Kansas City went to 115th Street rather than 115th Terrace to pick up his siblings. It was an honest mistake. When Ralph Yarl arrived, the 84-year-old occupant of 115th Street, shot him in the head, and then he shot Mr. Yarl again after he’d collapsed.
Mr. Yarl survived, fortunately. He is now recovering at home after a hospitalization and surgery. There is a GoFundMe page for his medical costs, tributes to his bravery, comments about how lucky he is and questions about whether the elderly man might have dementia.
I am enormously relieved that Mr. Yarl survived. But lucky? That word rubs me the wrong way. Let me explain.
I’m a White woman. I raised my daughters in a midsize city in Michigan. Never once did I worry that they might not make it home because of their skin color. Because they might get pulled over for a traffic violation and it would go wrong. Because they would stop at the wrong house. Because someone would think they looked suspicious. Never once. My daughters? Me? White. Lucky.
This young man and others, too many to count, too many to even name anymore, are not lucky just because they survived. Ralph Yarl survived the shooting. But I cannot fathom the deep scars left by this trauma, this narrow escape from death. And all because he went to the wrong door.
Mimi Emig, Grand Rapids, Mich.
[ad_2]
Source link
